Haha, well played. It's a bit like a car accident with guts and limbs flying through the air: You want to look away, it gives you pain to see it, makes you want to throw up, but you just can't turn around.

Im not so sure I can complain about the last 2 games. The transition game has been much, much better and the team actually has speed going through the neutral zone.

I'm not complaining about the last 2 games. Transition game was much better and the team was more aggressive about driving to the net with the puck. But guess what that resulted in...more chances for the other team. So we have to pick our poison. You can't look at team offense and team defense in vacuums. Both systems impact each other.

Tort's mantra is to keep the puck as far away from the Rangers net as possible. That means getting the puck below the goal line in the offensive zone. It's why you see our best players more often then not dump and chase on an even break. It's why you so very rarely see a Ranger pass the puck backwards in the neutral zone. Just get it deep and go from there. Torts would rather forego an offensive rush to prevent the possibility of a rush the other way.

But it's not like we have Guy Hebert and Igor Ulanov on the back-end. And I think Lundqvist actually plays better, is more focused, and is more motivated when he's getting chanced. So I don't think it would necessarily hurt the team's chances if things open up a bit more.

I hate the system because everyone collapses so low into the zone, that it leads to no one ever wins any races to the puck when it's along the half boards. In turn, it's very hard to get a quick transition going the other way. We spend way too much time chasing the puck in the Dzone.

I'm not complaining about the last 2 games. Transition game was much better and the team was more aggressive about driving to the net with the puck. But guess what that resulted in...more chances for the other team. So we have to pick our poison. You can't look at team offense and team defense in vacuums. Both systems impact each other.

Tort's mantra is to keep the puck as far away from the Rangers net as possible. That means getting the puck below the goal line in the offensive zone. It's why you see our best players more often then not dump and chase on an even break. It's why you so very rarely see a Ranger pass the puck backwards in the neutral zone. Just get it deep and go from there. Torts would rather forego an offensive rush to prevent the possibility of a rush the other way.

I agree about pick your poison. I wish more people would recognize the risk/reward components.

Theres certain teams its OK to get into a track meet with -- theres certain teams where its foolish (Pittsburgh comes to mind). Its easier to play a more wide open game, every team in the league can do that. Torts concentrates a bit more on the lockdown, grind it out type of game, because thats more difficult and physically demanding.

I dont mind him harping on it because I want a team that can play both ways by the time the playoffs come around.

I hate the system because everyone collapses so low into the zone, that it leads to no one ever wins any races to the puck when it's along the half boards. In turn, it's very hard to get a quick transition going the other way. We spend way too much time chasing the puck in the Dzone.

That's also the reason why our breakouts are so slow to develop. Our wingers, instead of playing tight on the opposing team's point men, are usually sitting in the low slot in the defensive zone. It's a big difference say from a team like the Blackhawks where the wingers rarely come far below their own blue line and are always tensed to rush up ice. When a Blackhawks d-man retrieves the puck in his own zone and looks up ice his wingers usually already have speed at the red line.

I agree with the other guy's point about Lundqvist also. He does play better when the other team is getting chances. Rangers D gave up a lot of opportunities the past two games. Carolina had at least 3-4 odd man rushes in the first period.

Why cant we seperate the threads? The Canucks board for example have a separate Vigneault and Gillis discussion thread.

I feel when I post about Sather, it gets overlooked with all the Torts posts. They are separate topics....

Yeah there should be two threads. Also when the thread gets to the "maximum" number of posts because of cheap software, there should be a link to the new thread in the final post before the close and a link to the old thread in the first post of the new thread